


Castle West

by rgdivine



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, idk maybe a medium burn its hard to judge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27481273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rgdivine/pseuds/rgdivine
Summary: Sometimes, once in a generation, twice, even more now that more and more people live as nomads among the stars, there comes a person who is not made for settlement. Their veins are full of stardust and their lungs the stuff of nebulas, and they are drawn to the beyond like gravity. It could not be escaped or denied.Usually, they become pilots. They lead the missions deeper and deeper into the beyond, seized by some phantom urge that could not be contained. Despite every warning, contrary to every instinct that most people have to stay where civilization had already sunk its roots, these pioneers plunge further into the vacuum. Slowly they change into monsters, and when the urge finally overtakes them completely, they disappear into the beyond. Often, they go alone.And often, they don’t return.It's been more than a century since the last near-Earth mission launched from Castle West Command Station disappeared. No one wants to think about it less than Iwaizumi Hajime, who absolutely hates ghost stories and false hope, but whoever is sending him impossible messages seems to be determined to lure him to the lost commander.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 22





	1. MESSAGE WAITING (part i)

It is his last shift before the weekend at the command desks just above the rest of the comm bank, and Hajime is watching his screens with one eye and playing cards with his desk partner, his assistant director, with the other and it happens. At the end of the row, the monitors blink out briefly. Hajime turns his eyes to his monitors, mildly alarmed but far more curious than anything else. Darkness like a wave ripples across the whole setup, cutting out their power and then restoring it, as if nothing happened.

“That's weird,” Says his desk partner, a younger guy with a shaved head. “Wonder what that was.” The code on his screens is still scrolling, so he shrugs it off. Hajime is still staring at his own screens.

For just a second, there on the center monitor, there had been a name.

System interruptions are not entirely out of the ordinary; no one in the room seems alarmed, just muttering to one another in curiosity, ripples in the wake of the wave, then lapsing again into the normal low tone of scattered murmuring. For his part, Hajime all but forgets about the glitch, putting it out of his mind after his shift is over. It has finally cycled to his Friday off and there is nothing he looks forward to more than these days he can steal out of the dim bank of screens and their scrolling code, telling him, as usual, that there is nothing out there, nothing out there, just endless dust and emptiness (and the few missions that still pass through or orbit in their home system).

For three days, he manages to forget what awaits him on Monday morning, his own scribbled handwriting on a garish sticky note stuck just out of normal sight, proclaiming in icy tones:

_Oikawa Tooru._

Discreetly, scowling, Hajime glances around, grabs the sticky note and folds it up, shoving it into the breast pocket of his jacket.

 _Castle West_ Command Station was once a place of glory. In its heyday, it boasted great names, great accomplishments. The second outpost in the stars beyond, the one hailed as savior of mankind as they fled to the stars. Hajime was a descendant of some of those who’d gotten out by way of _Castle West_.

These days, it holds a darker reputation.

After the incident, more than a century before Hajime’s tenure here, it was a little harder to find eager volunteers. Hajime considers himself lucky for that. The station with its imposing, antiquated architecture, ruins of great launch setups, dusty comms, messy wiring: he had been fascinated by it since he was a kid, done his high school internship there. He’d toured other stations, of course—coming out of one of the top engineering schools in the nearby systems, he’d had his pick—but something always felt different about _Castle West._

Something felt _alive._

There were always weird stories. Always rumors, nothing more, that were never more prolific than when a new batch of new-hires or interns came to the station. Everyone wanted to know what had happened to the ghost fleet. In reality, it was nothing more than a mission, a fleet that had ventured too far and fallen out of communications range; unfortunate, but it happened. Most of the time, before the wider net of signals had been established, these orphaned missions wandered back to another station and news of the recovery just never made it back to the mother station.

The ghost fleet was significant because they had never turned back up, anywhere—and historians scoured through records for years afterwards. (Hajime did, too, once, for a college project.) But probably on top of that, the legends about it persisted because it carried some of the most promising minds of the generation. A tragic loss for all of spacefaring kind. There is even a memorial where the old launch deck used to be, that is avoided by just about everyone who worked there and visited only digitally by tourists.

(That place is just too creepy to sit in in person. People say it’s haunted, say they see a figure out of the corner of their eye, sitting and waiting for his fleet to come home, after all this time.)

The loss of the fleet was one from which _Castle West_ never recovered.

And every season, rumors churn reliably from the rumor mill—usually veterans like Iwaizumi’s desk mate and assistant director, Tanaka, who have little better to do than torment the new-hires, instill the fear of the beyond into them. They had drifted just beyond communication range but their navs had gone out, and just beyond the reach of civilization they had resorted to eating one another, a modern-day Donner Party. They had been taken out by secret police, because there was talk of a coup in the works. They had abandoned the exploratory corps and ventured out on their own, and their descendants still lived in a distant outpost. Hajime despises all of the rumors, exasperated and sure of the truth: they had gotten lost, lived in fear and despair, and died alone in the vacuum; the worst fate known to spacefarers.

But the rumor he hates most of all, and the one that is most persistent, is this:

Sometimes, once in a generation, twice, even more now that more and more people live as nomads among the stars, there comes a person who is not made for settlement. Their veins are full of stardust and their lungs the stuff of nebulas, and they are drawn to the beyond like gravity. It could not be escaped or denied.

Usually, they become pilots. They lead the missions deeper and deeper into the beyond, seized by some phantom urge that could not be contained. Despite every warning, contrary to every instinct that most people have to stay where civilization had already sunk its roots, these pioneers plunge further into the vacuum. Slowly they change into monsters, and when the urge finally overtakes them completely, they disappear into the beyond. Often, they go alone.

And often, they don’t return.

“That’s stupid,” Hajime overheard a new-hire say, once. Haiba Lev, intern transfer. Certainly not at any risk for such a fate, as little eagerness as he displayed, but he had visibly suppressed a shudder at the thought. “Why would an entire fleet do that? Isn’t it rare?”

Of course, it had been Yaku tormenting the guy. Hajime had had half a mind to go over and break it up, but Haiba could use some tormenting once in a while, and Yaku outranked him, anyway. Their overworked commander and his mischievous streak had to find an outlet somehow.

“Sure,” Said Yaku. “Unless the commander had already changed.”

The commander of the ghost fleet. A mystery, wiped nearly entirely from all the records Hajime could get his hands on in college, but for his name, carved in the granite of the first pillar of the memorial. He could have been anyone, but in the end he amounted to this: someone who had gotten his whole fleet lost, who had never returned.

But imagination persisted. The stories liked to portray him like this:

Charismatic and bound for the destructive fate of the stargazers, Oikawa Tooru was always a little off. Always wanted more than the universe could give. When the people who turned their eyes to the stars, to whatever they saw that lay beyond, went just a little too far, they always seemed to change, change into something else, something like the old lore of the sirens. Something made of stars and the desperate need to fill a hole that mankind hardly acknowledges it has.

Oikawa Tooru turned his eyes to the stars, sang their song, and, the pied piper of _Castle West_ , led the entire fleet of the Eighth Discovery Expedition to their deaths.

At _Castle West_ there are four departments. Hajime is in charge of one of them—Communications, not what he had imagined himself doing for the rest of his life at eight years old but not the worst thing by a long shot, either—and the others are these:

Mission Control & Launch, directed by Sawamura Daichi and his assistant Yahaba Shigeru. Even though there are rarely missions starting from the old base anymore, it’s still a high-profile department, and Daichi is reliable. Hajime wouldn’t trust anyone else with the job (not that it’s his call, but still). Yahaba’s shallow and a bit of a bitch and a bit of a pain in the ass but he’s got talent and a sharp eye and knows how to run the department in a tough situation almost as well as Daichi himself can. Hajime is glad it’s not him in the job, because the Launch wing gives him the serious heebie-jeebies. It’s old and wrecked and reeks of ghosts.

Engine Systems, which has less to do with actual engines considering that _Castle West_ has none of its own, and more to do with general electronic maintenance of the base and engineering, electrical and computer and otherwise, is directed by a man named Matsukawa Issei. The assistant position has been unoccupied for a couple of seasons, but Matsukawa is, at least, competent enough to run the department mostly on his own, although Daichi and Hajime have both stepped up when needed.

And finally, Atmospheric Systems, fondly nicknamed Atmo, which maintains livable conditions on the station, since there is no atmosphere on the moon on which the base is established, and general station upkeep including air cycling, among other scattered related duties. Atmo is directed by Hanamaki Takahiro, who is an absolute scourge with a teasing streak a kilometer wide, and his assistant Watari Shinji, who is a genuine pleasure to work with and puts up with a heaping helping of shit on the daily and yet still somehow remains kind and well-mannered.

Hajime is a good enough guy—he tries to be patient, he does his work, he goes to the gym with Daichi—but every day, Hanamaki and Matsukawa, the terrible twosome, always with Hanamaki in the lead with a sparkle in his eye and Matsukawa with an easy grin following behind, test his limits as if it’s a sport.

They hunt him down in the mess on Wednesday, midday, before the directors’ meeting. He’s spent the past few days reassuring jumpy interns that a brief system interruption is nothing to be worried about, and now he’s mentally preparing himself to do the same for a jumpy commander, not to mention his own recently jumpy self.

“I swear, you two have trackers on me,” Hajime mutters as they take their seats on either side of him, boxing him in. Matsukawa immediately sticks his chopsticks into Hajime’s rice and disinterestedly allows Hajime to slap at his hand.

“Mostly harmless ones,” Hanamaki agrees, putting his elbow on the table and leaning his chin on his hand. “What’ve you got coming up?”

Hajime narrows his eyes slightly. It always starts off innocently enough, but there’s no way that Hanamaki intends to keep it that way. Hajime has enough experience with these two to be suspicious. “There’s the check in with the _Beacon_ next week and the _Ascendant_ is passing by… I think the week after, and they have a suspected minor comms breakdown, so we’re gonna try to reconnect them if we have to. Other than that, it’s pretty easy.” He fixes Matsukawa and his sneaking food-stealing fingers with a trademarked suspicious stare. “What are you trying to rope me into now?”

“Well,” Matsukawa starts, grin spreading slowly over his face as Hajime smacks at his hand again. “There’s this open mic night next Wednesday at the place in the orbital.”

“And,” Hanamaki picks up where he left off, drawing Hajime’s attention back to him and enabling Matsukawa to steal another bite of his rice before he can catch him. “We have a song for three—”

“No.”

“—And if you came we’d pay for the food, the drinks—”

“Absolutely not,” Hajime glares at them both in turn. “You can’t bribe me like that.”

Hanamaki sighs dramatically and leans back in his chair with a shrug at Matsukawa from behind Hajime’s back. “We tried, at least,” He says to his friend, and the other director nods mournfully.

“Iwaizumi the fun-killer,” He answers with the seriousness of someone discussing a funeral for a person, and not midweek plans. Hajime could not roll his eyes harder if he tried.

“Whatever. What have you guys got?”

A hum from Hanamaki. “Cyclical reset of the west corridors and we’re doing a thunderstorm in the preserve at the end of the week. Mattsun?”

Matsukawa is making a face at the table. “The system blip in Comm last week—thanks for that, by the way—knocked out some of the panels over in the power station and one of the media towers. So that’s topping the agenda for next week.”

Hajime hand itches suddenly to pat his jacket pocket. He ignores the urge. System interruptions happen; the worst that could happen is that something comes of what Matsukawa mentions.

“Castle West to Iwaizumi, come in Iwaizumi,” He’s been spacing out, and he blinks with the sudden realization. The other director had been waving his hand in front of his face, but he stops when Hajime looks at him with the most deadpan expression he can muster on short notice. “Lost you there for a second. Don’t tell me the blip is bothering you.”

“It’s not,” He answers automatically, scowling. Hanamaki sits back again as Hajime preempts Matsukawa’s thievery by taking a bite, speaking around his food: “It’s a system interruption. I’ve been telling this to the interns all week. It’s no big deal. I just don’t want Kawanishi to give me that judgmental tone of voice when he calls.”

Hanamaki snorts, but Matsukawa is still eyeing him, so Hajime raises a questioning eyebrow at him.

“It’s unlike you to dwell on this sort of thing,” He says by way of explanation, and Hajime remembers exactly why Matsukawa is also named among the terrible twosome. Far too shrewd for his own good.

Hajime offers him a shrug and just a hint of a wide-eyed look. _I don’t know what you’re talking about._ “I am literally not dwelling. It’s a system interruption, and _you_ brought it up. But Yaku will probably say something too. You know how the Net can get about these things. Once we get the call with the _Beacon_ out of the way it’ll be fine.”

The terrible twosome share a look and a shrug of their own and Hanamaki stands and stretches. “I’m gonna go get food. Mattsun, you want?”

“Nah, I’m eating Iwa’s.”

“No, he’s not. Get him food or he’ll starve,” Hajime interjects, scowling, and dismisses the whole thing. He has never been the kind to fall for the songs of pipers.

They walk him to the meeting after that, flanking him like particularly annoying bodyguards, and then he and Hanamaki compete for who can get through the door first before Matsukawa manually moves them both aside and enters on his own. Slightly embarrassed, but _only_ slightly, they both follow.

Daichi is already present, sitting at the right hand of the head of the table, and Yahaba’s seated against the wall behind him. Yahaba’s not technically supposed to be present, but no one objects as long as he stays quiet. It’s good practice anyway, for someone who will probably be snapped up for a director’s position on one of the near-system missions soon enough. Matsukawa sits across from Daichi, and Hanamaki and Hajime take their seats.

As usual, the commander arrives three minutes after the meeting begins, interrupting their chatter as only Yaku, a small guy with the internal demonic potential of a hundred dying star systems, can manage. He takes his seat at the head of the table and glances around them all.

“Alrighty. Let’s get this over with.”

Director meetings are all the same, whether or not Yaku is present (and he’s usually not, because he hates meetings and bureaucracy an impressive amount for someone who got appointed commander of _Castle West_ ): They go around the table discussing funding and departmental issues and staff turnover and shortages. _Castle West_ is pretty stagnant, usually, so these little meetings usually end quickly, but this time…

_Oikawa Tooru._

Distantly, he registers Matsukawa say his name, something about his department and a system interruption.

Hajime straightens up and shakes himself when Hanamaki kicks his shin below the table (behind him, he hears the distinct sound of Yahaba stifling a snort and feels the spontaneous and entirely unrelated urge to throttle him). “Right, the system interruption from last week.” This is the first time they’ve all been in a room since then. “It hasn’t been affecting Comm, but it still might be a good idea to get someone out there to look. Matsukawa mentioned one of the media towers went down for a bit. If it’s a problem with the tower, we should nip it in the bud, yeah?”

Yaku’s nodding approval. “Good idea. Matsukawa, do you have anyone you can spare for it?”

“No,” The director responds, frowning and counting on his hands. “All my teams are busy with the power station.” He casts Yaku a bit of a pleading look, which could be a joke, but may not be, because Matsukawa is never super obvious about when he _isn’t_ joking, and Hajime’s not really interested in puzzling it out. “I could really use an assistant.”

It’s not the first time he’s said that, and Yaku rolls his eyes but nods again. “I’ll put in a request for next season, alright?” Matsukawa gives assent, and Yaku continues. “Finally. Get off my back. Daichi, do you think—?”

Daichi smiles. “Sure, not a problem. We’ve got light few weeks, so I’ll see about getting someone out there. If I give you a name—” He directs this to Hajime, who lifts his brows a little bit in acknowledgement. “—Can you handle the rest? Someone equipped for a walk on the surface, and you know what they need to look for?”

“Yeah, we can do that for sure,” He agrees, returning Daichi’s smile with a grateful upturn of his mouth.

“That’s good, you two,” Yaku says. “Get that done by the end of the month. I don’t want to have to get a crew out here.”

There’s an undercurrent to his words that Hajime grimaces at inwardly. He doesn’t have to say it, they all know that the Net executives have been eyeing _Castle West_ for rollbacks or even shutdown for a while. They’ve been protected by their status as a historical icon so far, but mechanical failures could very well provide an excuse for temporary-turned-permanent shutdown. It wouldn't be a huge career loss for any of them, at least any of those in this room, but Yaku’s prideful, and Hajime’s attached. They’d fight with everything they had to stay operational. The end of the month is in three weeks.

Daichi must be thinking the same thing as he meets Hajime’s own gaze from across the table. “We’ll get it done, boss,” He says, with the sense of finality that only Daichi can manage, and Hajime nods. That’s that, then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT 12/22/2020: i've split the first two chapters into two parts each, so if you're rereading because you see a new chapter count and you've read MESSAGE WAITING and MESSAGE INTERCEPTED, then you've read all that is released-- there are some minor edits in each of the chapters, but no new content. i figured the chapters were a little long
> 
> ORIGINAL NOTE: hello & thank you for reading this far into my new project, castle west. what started as a whim and a twenty minute sprint has grown exponentially into a 35k and counting doc, and while i still feel its inadequacies quite glaringly, this is very much a project of self-indulgence. the next two chapters are drafted, and a good portion of the rest of everything after that, so strap in.
> 
> the usual shoutouts go to fable & the kidz club for listening to me rant and giving the doc a read-over in its various stages and yelling at me to stop doubting myself. you guys are everything to me.
> 
> as usual, you can find me on twitter @rgdivine where i talk about haikyuu, castle west, kingdom hearts, and whatever else crosses my cluttered mind. i reply to comments and i love meeting new people!


	2. MESSAGE WAITING (part ii)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > _Slowly, the sound swells; the gentle haunting calls of ancient whales. It’s a common myth, that there are whales among the stars. Humanity fled the Earth which they destroyed of their own volition and, overwhelmed by the guilt of their own misdeeds, saw in every corner the ancient noble beasts they gave to death. Of course, Hajime buys into this sort of myth no more than he does the ridiculous myth of Oikawa: things that are dead stay dead._

The preserve is nice, because it has to be. Seriously, there's laws about it.

Hajime doesn’t spend a lot of time out here, preferring to hang around the gym when he’s out of the office, but there’s no better way to clear his head than to get out of his routines. At any rate, he ends up here, in the preserve, in the early evening after the directors’ meeting, watching artificial sunlight filter through an artificial atmosphere and letting a beetle crawl over his boot.

He sighs and slumps against the bench back, letting his posture crumble. It’s kind of nice, which he kind of needs after the last week. He’ll have to get back to the Comm room soon, but if he goes back in there, he’s genuinely worried he’ll lose his _mind_ , thinking about Oikawa Tooru and messages from beyond the grave.

 _It’s unlike you to dwell on this sort of thing,_ his internal voice, sounding an awful lot like Matsukawa, whispers to him.

 _I’m not dwelling,_ he insists back, trying not to dwell, either, on how he is arguing silently with himself. He doesn’t feel like acknowledging the ridiculousness of that. If there were ever an indication he needed to take more time off…

The thing is that Hajime doesn’t like ghost stories. He doesn’t like false hope and he doesn’t like stories without an ending. Logic, science, suggests there are two states in which people can exist: alive, and not alive. Even if Oikawa hadn’t died when they dropped into deep space, it’s been generations since then. He would be dead by now, for sure. Immortals don’t exist, and neither do sirens.

And dead people’s names don't show up on his monitors during a system interruption.

He closes his eyes with a frown.

It sounds like bells, at first, like the chiming of the wind chimes outside the shrine back home. The sound curls around his heart and wraps it tight with chains of wistfulness, of homesickness, and he closes his eyes, taking in the sound—no melody, no harmony, just distant chimes.

Slowly, the sound swells; the gentle haunting calls of ancient whales. It’s a common myth, that there are whales among the stars. Humanity fled the Earth which they destroyed of their own volition and, overwhelmed by the guilt of their own misdeeds, saw in every corner the ancient noble beasts they gave to death. Of course, Hajime buys into this sort of myth no more than he does the ridiculous myth of Oikawa: things that are dead stay dead.

But it’s a nice thought, the thought of no more loss, and it’s a nice sound.

Distantly he thinks he hears someone singing, behind the tuneless songs of the whales. A low tenor, quiet and soft, invitational. If there are lyrics to the strange song the person sings, Hajime can’t make them out. But it’s lulling, nonetheless, and he breathes deep, listening to the song lift up and drop down, at first sugar-sweet and then shifting into minor key, mournful and lonely.

There’s something almost familiar about the voice, like something he recalls from a childhood, sitting in the grass and watching beetles crawl about, listening to the cheer of a baseball game in the diamond nearby. Something wistful, of course, something longing. Hajime makes it a point not to long for much; he has achieved a childhood dream just by being in this place, and acceptance is an admirable thing, not to mention what keeps the dissatisfied many from flying into oblivion.

But here is this voice, half-hidden under layers of chimes and whale songs, the songs of the distant stars, uncovering a depth to his heart, a loneliness, he had in his refusal to admit it existed completely forgotten about.

The artificial breeze tugs at his shirt; Hajime opens his eyes and realizes with a sickening start that the bench is now several paces behind him; he is standing against the panel displays, set to the outside sky, littered with stars and the nearby sun of the Earth and its system. Hajime stares at that star, and bites back a curse as he hits his fist against the panel, turning and collapsing against it.

As much as he told himself he wouldn’t, he’s become attached. Oikawa Tooru has crawled inside of his head and refuses to be denied.

Kunimi gives him a _look_ when he comes on Friday evening, well after Tanaka has departed, to which Hajime scowls. Kunimi is a good kid, but he’s far too observant and has this way of raising his eyebrows that makes it clear he is judging you without being anything more than slightly annoying. It’s impossible to be seriously mad at him, so it just opens a sinking pit in Hajime’s stomach, reminding him that he _is_ being a little ridiculous, exactly as he promised himself he wouldn’t.

“What?” He snaps half-heartedly at Kunimi, rather than linger on the feeling. Kunimi’s eyebrows inch higher.

“I didn’t say anything,” He answers, taking Tanaka’s vacant seat and entering his login credentials. In a couple hours, the room will empty and Kunimi will be here alone, but if ever there were a person meant for the relatively dull job of overnight comms monitoring, it’s Kunimi. He’s not an over-achiever, hates pulling overtime, but he’s detail oriented and efficient above all. Not a lot happens in the overnight shift, but since it’s one of only a few positions on _Castle West_ that are active during the night hours, there’s some extra pressure to be alert to anything that would need attention.

(There was a time when Kunimi was eyed critically, the commander present before Yaku was brought in unsure if Kunimi could handle the position. Hajime had vouched for him then, but there had been a challenging glint in the younger man’s eyes. Never let it be said that Kunimi couldn’t fend for himself.)

Either way, though, when it isn’t an emergency, and it rarely is, Kunimi seems fairly content to spend his time with one eye on the scrolling numbers and the other on his chat messages. Hajime’s asked before, and it turns out he has a friend on the _Galleon Decisive Defender._ The _Galleon_ is nine hours ahead of _Castle West_ ’s cycle, which makes it the perfect line-up for him to be chatting with whoever it is he chats with. So, at least he isn’t bored, Hajime figures. They all do something to pass the time; Tanaka’s card games are only the most prominent example of many.

“You heard about the blip from last Thursday, right?” Hajime asks after a bit, glancing over at Kunimi, who is (predictably) staring blankly, eyes half-lidded, at the open message application on his monitor. Kunimi will be here alone; if a system interruption hits again, he'll have to deal with it. Slowly, black eyes slide over to him, unimpressed. Hajime shrugs. “I wanted to make sure. We brought it up with Yaku but the consensus is—”

“Signal interruption,” Kunimi finishes, looking back at the monitor as the application dings quietly. He types for a minute as Hajime greets a couple of the people leaving and waves them off. When his attention is back on Kunimi, he speaks again. “I know. It’s not like its unheard of.”

“I guess,” Hajime shrugs again. It’s starting to get a little cold; he pulls his sleeves down again and folds his hands behind his head. “I’m going to get someone out there to look at it, though. If one of our towers is damaged, we might have to get a crew out here, and who knows how long that’ll take.”

Kunimi makes a noise of distaste, and Hajime resists the urge to grin. It’s not like he’d send _Kunimi_ out there to check, but the mental image is funny. Yaku’s already signed off on him taking one of Daichi’s guys, so he’s waiting for a name, although Daichi had told him after the meeting that it might take until Tuesday or Wednesday to get it to him—not a problem.

“It’s bothering you more than it should,” Kunimi observes after a few minutes of not uncomfortable silence. Hajime frowns.

 _Again with this._ It’s just a signal interruption, which is not common but not unheard of, and sending someone out there to check is the most reasonable course of action—one Yaku has already approved, in fact. It's not something to be fixated on, but he is.

Hajime blinks and the imprint of the name sears the inside of his eyelids. Truth be told, that fact alone is reason enough for it to bother him. A signal interruption would show—as it had to every other monitor in the room—no data.

Kunimi is watching him out of the corner of his eye, and Hajime realizes his shoulders have tensed. He forces them to relax and shakes his head, smiling somewhat self-deprecatingly.

“I’ve been here long enough I think I’m starting to wait for the other shoe to drop,” He admits. “It’s always way too peaceful out here. Feels like a betrayal of my adventure-seeking younger self.”

As expected, the statement evokes a grimace.

“Keep it to yourself,” Kunimi mutters, hunching his shoulders inwards, curling into himself. Hajime chuckles at the predictable reaction, promises not to infect Kunimi with youthful ambition, and rolls the exchange over in his mind. Instinctively, he had lied. He had lied to Kunimi, to whom he has no good reason to lie, and he had lied to Matsukawa earlier, to the rest of the directors. Not for the first time since the interruption, not even for the second, he’s instinctively kept the story of the name on the monitor to himself.

It’s not like Hajime is a habitual liar. No, he assures himself silently, it’s not that he is omitting it for any nefarious purpose. He is straightforward and straight-laced; this incident doesn’t represent an aberration so much as just—not mentioning something that isn’t important, that would only spark more rumors. He hates the rumors. (People who are dead stay dead, and their names surely don’t appear on his monitor.)

 _Yes, that’s it._ He just doesn’t want to deal with the rumors. It was a glitch, pure and simple, and it won’t matter, because it won’t happen again. Best not to make a big deal out of it.

Hajime decides this and turns his attention once again to the scrolling numbers for the last couple of hours of his shift, but he can’t shake the feeling that’s settled over him, cold as the vacuum.

The weekend is swift and short and marked by a narrow miss when Daichi nearly dropped a weight on his own foot (and the subsequent teasing about going to see Suga, ribbing which he bore good-naturedly, if a little embarrassed), and Monday goes by almost without note; twice Hajime finds himself staring at the Comm room’s wall, the one that borders the outside. Beyond it is an expanse of dust and rock, the waxing parent planet in the sky, and beyond that, an expanse of stars, extending far past what even the most imaginative dreamer could think of. Endless.

It has never intrigued Hajime, and now, it is. Now, if for nothing else than for the sake of Oikawa Tooru and his doomed fleet, Hajime is wondering what is out there, what lies just past the threshold of the Net.

In the end, he gives in to at least some level of curiosity. The feeling has been hounding him, and he can’t help but think of Kunimi’s gaze, dull but knowing, of Yaku’s favorite ghost stories, of the faint singing voice. On Tuesday night, he leaves when Kunimi arrives. He bids him goodnight, skips dinner at the mess, and settles instead at the low table in the living room of his apartment with his tablet setup.

The public access archives aren’t as complete as the ones he used in college, not to mention bogged down with rumors and stories and in some cases just straight vulgarity, but they’ll suffice for his purposes.

 _Oikawa Tooru_ , he types.

Rescue missions weren't common—everyone knew the danger of vacuum and it was a risk they chose to accept—but one was mounted for Oikawa. He was a famous bioengineer, a prodigy gifted a fleet of outstanding proportions. After six months of nothing, not even a trace of his fleet, the organizers gave up. He was consigned to oblivion, little more than a name on a marble pillar out on the opposite wing from the preserve.

Hajime isn't terribly fond of ghost stories. _People who are dead stay dead,_ he thinks pointedly in the direction of his monitor, in the direction of Kunimi and of Hanamaki and Matsukawa. _People who are dead stay dead, and if this is bothering me for any reason, it’s that one._

This, he thinks with certainty as he submits the search query and waits for the data to load, will put the restless ghost story to bed, at least for him, for good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT 12/22/2020: this is the second half of message waiting, not new content. it's a little shorter, but i'd rather have a few shorter chapters than a smaller amount of longer chapters. more places for y'all to pause!
> 
> as usual, you can find me on twitter @rgdivine where i talk about haikyuu, castle west, kingdom hearts, and whatever else crosses my cluttered mind. i reply to comments and i love meeting new people!


	3. MESSAGE INTERCEPTED

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > _He stood in the market in night-time and was looking at the stars. She saw his nametag and the Castle West logo on his uniform and went to talk to him. He was so sad, saying that he missed someone, was looking for them. He said they had gotten in a fight. I always thought she was a little crazy, like why would he talk to some little girl? Where would the rest of his fleet go? It seemed like some weird way of coping—you know, the whole war generation felt like they lost some hero. So the idea that, I guess, he was some restless ghost looking for someone he’d lost—I guess that struck a chord. It seemed crazy or mournful or something, but not real. But recently, I’ve been doubting…_   
> 
> 
> In which routine calls are not as routine as Iwaizumi wishes they would be. 

There's a call waiting when Hajime gets into his shift on Wednesday. He punches in, keeping one eye on the blinking green light, and gets Kunimi to give him the readouts for the overnights before he leaves. The call is coming from the _Beacon,_ their sister station, which relates to _Castle West_ only in name and history. Today, the two stations could be no more different.

Hajime enters the security codes and switches to his headset.

“ _Beacon Everlasting,_ to what do we owe the pleasure?” His tone is blasé. In the several dozen of these calls that Hajime has handled, not once has anything more important than station gossip come up. These check-in calls tend to be routine, a notorious pain in the ass for all involved, Hajime not least of all.

On the other end is Kawanishi, as much is apparent immediately by the stifled sigh of displeasure, and Hajime grins. It's always a good day, a good start to these things, if he can rile up a fellow comms operator.

“Iwaizumi. I need the ranking officer in the room.”

The amusement in his stomach fizzles out like flat soda.

“Yaku’s in Engineering. Transfer me to Semi.”

Kawanishi, nothing if not efficient (and rather not fond of talking to people; he’d get along with Kunimi, Hajime thinks), does so immediately. There is a click, and then the distinct wobbling noises of signal transfers across the Net.

When it connects, for a few moments, there’s nothing on the line but the white noise, and Hajime frowns, a line drawing itself between his brows.

“Semi?”

The answer is immediate. “I’m here.” Below his voice is the distinct noise of shuffling as the commander moves things around. “Sorry. One second. Fucking Taichi,” The last part is muttered under his breath, and Hajime gets the distinct impression he wasn’t supposed to hear it. Kawanishi must have transferred it faster than Semi expected.

Living and working at the _Beacon_ must be an interesting experience. Periodic landings from the _Ultimate,_ sharing staff, and whatever sort of petty rivalries that shared staff can build that makes a mid-level Comms operator close friends enough to remotely taunt the commander himself. Still, it’s pretty unusual that one of these calls would be handled by the _Beacon_ ’s commander. His position is supposed to be above this. Really, even Hajime’s position is above this, but he doesn’t mind doing this routine stuff when Tanaka hasn’t come in yet.

“Everything alright?”

The silence on the other end lasts just a moment longer, and Semi clears his throat and speaks. “We just got through your power and Comm reports from last cycle. Your Comms department went out.” Semi is a no-nonsense guy with a notoriously short temper, kind of like Yaku if Yaku was less cheerful to strangers and had more of a resting bitch face, but Hajime has worked with him for a couple of years now, since he was appointed commander of the _Beacon Everlasting,_ which was technically a promotion but in practice something of a demotion from his previous post as the ranking officer in the research staff on the _Ultimate._

“Yeah,” Hajime confirms, narrowing his eyes and frowning. “It was a blip, only lasted for a minute. We assumed it was a signal interruption from the old tech. Not exactly something we were worried about.” The sister station agreement between the two old stations demands that they review one another’s vital information, a holdover from the days of more tremulous widespread Net connection. If one station was in danger, it could cause a huge domino effect. But these days, when the Net connection was stable and an antiquated station like _Castle West_ would be left to die if it failed, the review is largely formality. He had been hoping that this anomaly would pan out to nothing, for the sake of his own sanity, for the sake of the station; his hopes more and more appear to be dashed. “What did you guys find?”

“Did you know you got a transmission at the same moment? I assume it didn’t show up in your records.”

_Oikawa Tooru._ Hajime couldn’t tear his eyes away from the middle of his monitor if he tried. “No,” He answers without a change in tone. “It didn’t. Where did it originate?”

The sound of flipping pages (Semi likes things in print, on paper, for some reason Hajime has never been able to puzzle out). “No reading. I guess you weren’t expecting a transmission.”

“No.”

“The timing is quite a coincidence,” Semi says, prompting, as if he expects an explanation that Hajime doesn’t have, in a tone that heavily implies he doesn’t think it is a coincidence at all. Explanation or none, Hajime is more than inclined to agree.

The previous night’s archive-diving expedition, which was supposed to put his uneasiness to rest, achieved quite the opposite. Almost everything he found that wasn’t the official story put out by the expedition organizers, the one that made it into the memorial here at _Castle West,_ or old news stories he had basically memorized in college, was conspiracy theory blogs running on the ancient and unchecked threads of the Net. The opposite of reputable. He had read them anyway.

_What happened to Oikawa Tooru and the Garden of the Gods fleet?_ One had asked. _Not what They want you to think. He’s still out there._

_What does that mean? What is that supposed to mean?_

Hajime had silently agreed with the replies, but there was no answer. There were no later entries on the blog. He had closed out, cleared the history, and tried the next.

This one told stories of monsters, described people horribly twisted by the vacuum, their bones brittle and their skin solid as ice, dripping with space-frost and eyes wide, skulls cracked, faces disfigured. This is what happened to the people who turned their eyes to the stars beyond the reaches of civilization, it warned, using Oikawa as the headlining name. And now they lurked in the vacuum, waiting for an opportunity to lure others into their grasp.

Hajime had snorted at that one.

Another claimed to have a grandmother who had seen him in a city on a planet far from _Castle West_ a year after the mission disappeared. _He stood in the market in night-time and was looking at the stars. She saw his nametag and the Castle West logo on his uniform and went to talk to him. He was so sad, saying that he missed someone, was looking for them. He said they had gotten in a fight. I always thought she was a little crazy, like why would he talk to some little girl? Where would the rest of his fleet go? It seemed like some weird way of coping—you know, the whole war generation felt like they lost some hero. So the idea that, I guess, he was some restless ghost looking for someone he’d lost—I guess that struck a chord. It seemed crazy or mournful or something, but not real. But recently, I’ve been doubting…_

That one had bothered him, because it was wistful, melancholy, and it told a story that Hajime hadn’t wanted to think about. Someone Oikawa had left behind. It made him a little angry, actually: why would someone run off, leave their loved ones behind? Oikawa Tooru could have been anyone, but the idea that he would be someone like that—it bothered Hajime.

A forum thread argued about if he was dead or alive. One poster had said that he had to have been still alive, long after the fleet disappeared, because the star-eyed people can’t die in space. Another wrote, _The Net killed him, I’m sure of it. Why else couldn’t they find the fleet? It was an assassination._ The last spoke of the inevitable death of _Castle West_ itself, haunted by the restless spirit of the star-eyed Oikawa, with nothing left to do but burn it all down.

Another blog said he hadn’t ever been on the fleet. Another said he killed them all. Several more told their own stories of sightings, their own stories of monsters. Hajime had closed the app and cleared his history when he found people claiming to be spurned lovers. That was a bridge too far.

Hajime joins the ranks of crazy conspiracy theorists, he supposes: not a single forum post, not a single blog entry that he could find was anything close to convincing, objectively, but the more that he read them the more that it bothered him. The Net wasn’t

Semi makes a short sound in his throat, and Hajime realizes he's still waiting for an answer. It’s been just a moment too long.

“If you’re on the call with me,” Hajime said in lieu of one. “I’m guessing it’s marked as an important transmission.”

Semi obviously caught the way he dodged the unspoken question, by the grunt he gives, but he lets it slide. “Yeah. Top priority, classified. Straight to your department, too.” A soft growl. “Well, obviously somebody knew what was going on.”

“You think it’s an interception?”

“Man, I don’t know what to think. It’s your station, isn’t it?” Semi growls back, and Hajime resists the urge to get irritated. _Yeah_ , it’s his station, but it’s ludicrous to expect him to know what’s going on here, when he’s still stuck on the idea that some old dead guy is sending him messages from outside the Net.

“Alright. Well, thanks. I’ll bring it to Yaku, anyway, although who knows what we’ll make of it.” He exhales roughly and can all but hear Semi back down. Still so aggressive, but at least he catches himself. Hajime has heard tell of some pretty impressive commander’s meetings wherein Semi and Yaku drive each other up the wall (he’d pay to see that, though he wouldn’t admit to it aloud). “We’ve got your check in ready too, actually. Here…”

The _Beacon Everlasting,_ of course, has a spotless record, and Hajime tells Semi as much. The _Beacon_ was founded at nearly the same time as _Castle West_ , and operated in much the same function; where _Castle West_ was a checkpoint, a haven for those fleeing the Earth, the _Beacon_ was far-flung, a reminder that humanity could, would, and will reach out ever further into the stars.

And then, like it were fated, _Castle West_ declined into disaster and obscurity, while the _Beacon Everlasting_ climbed to ever greater heights. It serves these days as a launch point for the steadiest semi-permanent research mission in range of the Net, the _Ultimate,_ commanded by Ushijima Wakatoshi. It is surrounded by flourishing border cities, but within a stone’s throw of deep space, just as is _Castle West_. Still, it has never found itself plagued by misfortune, commanded by a series of more than competent executives.

The record is spotless, and Hajime tells Semi as much; they both expected it, and Semi for his part accepts the review without too much arrogance, and the call wraps up shortly. Hajime is left staring at his station, the imprint of Oikawa Tooru’s name still dancing on his vision, taunting.

It’s possible that that was the only thing that slipped through the interruption. The very first part of an important coded communication with no origin point, sent to his station by the glitching and crossed wires of a brief system outage. It’s possible… But unlikely.

Hajime makes a meeting request with Yaku.

Daichi’s seriousness about keeping _Castle West_ at top (achievable) condition is evident: by Wednesday midday he’s sent Hajime a message consisting of just one name: _Ikejiri Hayato_. Hajime knows Ikejiri—he’s one of Daichi’s top ranking guys, experienced and cool under pressure, although not as technically talented as some of those in Matsukawa’s department, like Shimizu Kiyoko, who was strongly considered for the assistant position before she nipped that discussion in the bud by turning it down pre-emptively; however, he’s perfect for this mission, and better yet, he’s available. Hajime sends Daichi a quick _thanks_ and starts a message to Ikejiri.

The intranet of _Castle West_ is robust and efficient, the most-recently updated part of their facility—in fact, the _only_ recently-updated part of their facility, and that’s mostly because their sister station agreement means they have to connect with the _Beacon_ ’s ‘net, and the _Beacon_ is a big enough name that it piggy-backs off the _Fukurodani_ , a massive orbital research station in a major, high traffic system. _Castle West_ is more or less required to keep up.

It’s a luxury because of that that Hajime gets messages quickly to other members of the station with few slipping through the cracks, and that he can catch up with old college buddies who ended up on the _Fukurodani_ without having to wait weeks for databursts or risk dropped messages on the mediocre-at-best Net connections to this distant place outside the intranet.

In this moment, he’s taking advantage of the first part, which conveniently also means he doesn’t have to go hunt down Ikejiri, who is probably in the launch wing, which Hajime can’t stand.

_Ikejiri,_

_I hope Daichi’s told you what you’re about to get into. Your name was given to me for a quick scout of the media towers. Director Matsukawa’s got a problem with the easternmost one. My department had a system interruption last week that we think is connected to this—probably something short-circuited, a weird storm of problems that knocked out a bunch of stuff over in Engineering._

_I need you to do a walk to the east media tower. Get it up running if you can. Report if there’s anything out of the ordinary or repairs to be made that you can’t do when you’re out there. I can’t tell you what you’re looking for, but I’m sure you’ll know it when you see it. ASAP._

_Iwaizumi._

It’s good that there are people like Daichi here; Hajime feels reassured by his presence, and he would swear in a court of law that he is not the only one who thinks that way. He trusts him to fight to the bitter end to keep this station running. But _Castle West_ is old and full of ghosts. The Net operators have had their eyes on it for a while, irritated the way it leeches off of the _Fukurodani_ , how much of a failure it is in the scheme of history.

_Castle West_ is a picture of fallen magnificence, and it’s certainly mournful here. It’s weird to be in the last place where giants walked alive; it’s why Hajime avoids the old launch wing. But at the same time, it’s a thing of pride.

Ikejiri’s response comes in not an hour later:

_Director Iwaizumi,_

_You can count on me. I’ll have your results by Monday._

_Ikejiri._

By the time the week ends, Hajime feels about ready to collapse. He leaves before Kunimi arrives on Friday, saying goodnight to Tanaka on his way out. This week was not supposed to be stressful, and he had said as much to the terrible duo the Wednesday before, immediately after which, of course, they all seem to have collectively decided that the following two weeks would take the opposite track. He probably should have known better, in retrospect, and had the sense to knock on wood. Hajime can’t even be pleased that he has been very productive today, because what had already escalated to a priority at the directors’ meeting has jumped up after the check-in to a pressing immediacy.

That was what he spent the last few days on, between the check-in call, putting in the meeting request, messaging with Daichi and Ikejiri, and retrieving, compiling, and reviewing all the data he could find about system interruptions in the past, from _Castle West_ and from the _Beacon_ and even from the _Fukurodani,_ as rare as it was there. There wasn’t much, but there was enough that Hajime found himself obsessively cleansing his history and glancing over his shoulder as if the downfall of _Castle West_ would arrive at any moment, with him as harbinger.

_Ridiculous_ , he thinks as he glances over his shoulder as he keys into his apartment. It’s Semi Eita’s fault, really, and the fault of those weird dark conspiracy blogs, making him think that somehow, more than a century after Oikawa Tooru disappeared, that he’s desperately trying to message his parent station and that the Net itself is intercepting. Hajime exhales, slumping down on the couch, and covers his eyes briefly with his elbow.

Ikejiri will get the media tower back up, Matsukawa will make a wry comment or three, the message will be something bland from the _Fukurodani_ ’s researchers that just had its origin point scrambled, and they’ll be fine.

Hajime reaches out without looking and knocks on the surface of his table, then sits up.

The table is standard to _Castle West_ apartments and doubles as a home work station. He activates its transparent surface, tiled with the same small hexagons that make up the walls and the comm panels, with a tap to the corner, and sets his tablet down to start transferring files between the devices. While that’s going, Hajime goes to the kitchen to start on coffee.

Paranoia aside, there’s something a little calmer about the overtime hours. And really, he’d rather be doing this than being paranoid at work. At least if he is obsessing over these reports, it’s something he can control, unlike whatever the Net operators decide to do, or what is happening with the media towers.

Hajime brings the coffee back to the table and sets it down on the opposite side from his tablet, settling on the floor with his feet tucked to the side, back against the couch. With a flick of his fingers, all the data he has collected spreads across the surface in neat little tabs, next to the open messaging app and its two most recent participants: Kawanishi Taichi and Soekawa Jin. Hajime takes a second to be satisfied with the neatness, as momentary as it is sure to be, and then dives in.

The night drifts away measured only by the amount of coffee in his mug, and then, by the number of refills. Hajime glances at the clock blinking near the ceiling: midnight has come and gone and he’s still trying to puzzle out the triangulation of the origin point. The trace of the transmission that Semi mentioned is there, now that he knows what he’s looking for, but it blends in so easily with the rest of the records, hardly an anomaly at all. Whatever intern missed it, or more likely, Tanaka, they’ve escaped a chewing out.

But the origin is still missing, a distinct difference from their usual transmissions. Hajime’s reading comprehension leaves something to be desired at this hour, but as best as he can tell, the loss of the media tower makes it impossible to triangulate. If they could get it back…

He sighs. The night continues.

Another half-hearted glance at the clock a little later reveals that it’s nearly three in the morning. Hajime sighs, stretches, and props his chin on his hand. Just a little more…

_Haven’t you found what you’re looking for already?_

His head shoots upright from where it had begun to slip. His heart is racing suddenly; Hajime catches his breath and makes himself calm down. For a second, he had been dreaming. (He hopes.)

He turns off the table’s surface and leaves the coffee mug where it is. He can wash it in the morning, or the midday, whenever he wakes up. But even as he throws himself in bed with little regard for his pants, the echo of the voice stays with him, its teasing lilt, the sound of a smile… Hajime drifts off with the words bouncing around his mind.

_Haven’t you found what you’re looking for already?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT 12/22/2020: this is not new content! this is the first part of the original chapter two, MESSAGE INTERCEPTED, the call with the beacon everlasting. if you read the original MESSAGE WAITING and MESSAGE INTERCEPTED, there is no new content here, i'm sorry to disappoint! however, the next part, THE MEDIA TOWERS, will be up soon :] thank you for your patience!
> 
> the problem with trying to start these longfics is that i end up unintentionally infodumping a ton in the beginning. i hope this wasn't as boring to read as i expect it to be! thank you for bearing with me & my little baby fic here :)
> 
> as usual, you can find me on twitter @rgdivine where i talk about haikyuu, castle west, kingdom hearts, and whatever else crosses my cluttered mind. i reply to comments and i love meeting new people!


	4. PROMISE ME

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > _“Look over there. That’s the system where Castle West is. Someday, we should meet up there.”_  
>  _“If you want me to, alright. Let’s meet there sometime.”_  
>  _“Promise me?_  
>  _“I promise.”_  
> 
> 
> In which Iwaizumi has a dream. 

He’s messaging the Comms operator of the _Ascendant_ back and forth on Wednesday when his personal tablet, face-down in the top drawer of his desk, plays a little tune. A meeting reminder.

Fuck, he nearly forgot about the meeting with Yaku.

He sends Yaku a quick message, _be there in five,_ and finishes the discussion with the _Ascendant._ A suspected breakdown turned out to be just a short interruption from a loop that got stuck, and they worked it out quickly, but the vessel still decided to orbit for a few hours, let its crew work off some stress before the weekend. No problem, and the Comm operator is someone with whom Hajime had once had mutual friends, so they are—well, gossiping more than working, but there is an element of actual business in there.

 _I’ve got to head to a meeting,_ he sends. _Let me know when you guys leave orbit, but I probably won’t catch you. You’ve got my contact information if the loop causes trouble again, or anything else. If you guys get another interruption, let me know. I’ll see you around._

_Iwaizumi._

Then he closes his station, grabs his tablet from the desk, says a quick _see you later_ to Tanaka, engrossed in what seems to be a particularly challenging game of solitaire, and heads over to Yaku’s office.

 _Castle West_ isn’t a labyrinth, but its layout is antiquated. It’s had very few major renovations since its founding—the memorial addition is the newest one and even that is several decades old. The launch wing is still very central, although Hajime goes out of his way to avoid it, going by the mess hall instead, and then detouring to Engine. In lieu of a dedicated commander’s office, Yaku makes his office at the top of the Engine Systems wing, nearby Matsukawa’s office and the vacant assistant's office.

Lev is sitting in the front office, fiddling with the 3-D projection of a diagram of something Hajime doesn’t have enough time to try to puzzle out the purpose of. He looks up when Hajime enters and turns off the tablet, offering the director a cheerful smile.

“Yaku’s waiting for you,” He says, and throws him a thumbs-up. “Good luck!”

“Thanks,” Hajime grunts. Lev’s a good kid, if blunt and less than socially adept. Yaku complains, but he’s fond of the kid, anyway, and has taken him under his wing more or less, although the _Fukurodani_ has already pretty much put dibs on him for the next cycle. He means well, wishing Hajime luck, even if it comes from a place of fear of Yaku’s demon reputation with the people doing the rounds, but for this meeting, the only luck Hajime needs is the off chance that Semi is wrong.

(He’s surely not.)

Hajime knocks but doesn’t wait for an answer as he enters and lets the door slide shut behind him. It clicks with an internal lock and Hajime meets Yaku’s intense stare with his own, taking a seat across the desk from the commander. “Semi thinks it’s an interception,” He says without preamble, and is validated by Yaku’s short intake of breath.

“What happened?”

Two nights previous, Hajime had downloaded the reports from both from his own department and Kawanishi’s over at the _Beacon,_ adding the finishing touches onto the summary he and Soekawa, Semi’s second, had put together, and put the whole thing in a file ready to be shown for this meeting. Silently, he loads it and slides the device towards Yaku. He watches the commander’s eyes move rapidly as he looks over it.

“No origin, huh?” He starts after a long silence, holding the tablet out to Hajime. “And send me this file, please.”

He takes the proffered device back and nods once. “Will do, and apparently. When the media tower is back online, we could try to trace an origin, or possibly triangulate it from where it bounced, but like I said, we’ll need the tower for that.”

“So that just jumped up the agenda,” Yaku agrees, frowning at the desk and flicking two fingers at something. He’s got a protection screen up, so Hajime can’t see _what_ he did, but he has a pretty good guess. “Depending where the message is from, we can rule in or out if it was something that was intercepted deliberately. It’s marked as important, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

“It could be a coincidence,” Hajime says, knowing full well that neither he nor Yaku nor Semi Eita nor anyone else who saw these records at the _Beacon_ believes it is actually a coincidence.

“There are no coincidences,” Yaku mutters under his breath, and then again, louder, lifting his gaze to fix Hajime with a dark stare. “If Daichi gave you a name, you had better be using it soon.”

“Ikejiri. He told me he’d have it up by Monday.”

“Even better,” Yaku says, and falls back against the back of his seat in a rare display of frustration. Yaku’s a solid commander with a firm grip on this place, and he can be stern, and his flares of temper are the stuff of legend, not unlike his counterpart at the _Beacon,_ but it’s a different thing to watch the stress crawl under his skin and tear him apart, real-time. “Gods all, I want this thing over with.”

There’s a tightness in Hajime’s chest, and he offers Yaku a smile he hopes is reassuring. “We’ve got this, Commander. We’re not letting this station go, either.”

He meets Ikejiri in the hall after the meeting. They’re heading in opposite directions—Ikejiri towards the Launch wing and the prep room, and Hajime towards the mess, and back to his station. Hajime was planning to let him pass without getting on his case, because Ikejiri is a hard worker and Daichi vouches for him, but he stops Hajime there in the hall.

“Director Iwaizumi,” He says, and Hajime turns back towards him, looking over his face. “I’m about to go out to the towers.”

He’s holding his hand out for a handshake—steady and unwavering. Hajime takes it. His grip is firm, and through it he communicates everything that can’t be said. The, _let this be over now_ , the shared determination to keep this station alive that everyone here holds, the fierce pride of camaraderie. When they back away from each other after a moment, Hajime gives him a firm nod.

“Good luck,” He says, and Ikejiri smiles, not unkindly.

“I don’t need it.”

Hajime knew he liked him for a reason.

When Hajime was seven years old, he lived in the outer-middle settlement of Abato. Abato was a permanent settlement built into a planet with a soil acidity too great to farm, but an atmosphere that was comfortable and nontoxic.

He had a friend here, a boy his age with dark hair and silver eyes, who liked sports and liked the stars, who couldn’t engage in the first because of a bad knee but he always pitched for Hajime, who liked baseball, and he always brought out his telescope in the indigo night and pointed out the constellations.

“They’re different in other settlements,” He explained to Hajime. Haruto Yuuki was the son of nomads, and he only came by every so often, but Hajime liked hitting his pitches and he liked sitting at his side and listening to him explain the stars. “When you’re in a different part of the universe, all the stars look weird, so you have to learn the constellations in all the different places if you want to navigate by hand.

“Look over there,” Haruto urged, and so he did. The other boy’s stubby finger was pointing at a star, mundane as all the rest around it, but Haruto seemed excited about it. “That’s the system where _Castle West_ is. Someday, we should meet up there.”

Hajime laughed. He had no plans of running off to the stars, especially not a station like that, haunted by ghosts and a fallen giant, even if he did owe it, in a vague, distant sort of way, like a lot of other people, his existence. Even if a great many people owed it a great many things. But Haruto was starting to get a pout that annoyed Hajime, so he patted his friend’s shoulder in a placating manner.

“Alright, alright,” He said, and looked back at the distant star. “If you want me to, alright. Let’s meet there sometime.”

“Promise me?”

He was reaching out one hand, his pinky curled loosely. Haruto was a month younger than him, but he had yet to outgrow pinky promises, and although Hajime had, he didn’t begrudge his friend this much, so he reached out and took hold of his pinky with his own.

“I promise.”

Haruto laughed, laughed, and it echoed strangely, and as Hajime watched, alarmed by the sudden shift in demeanor, his face burst at the seams with light, the indigo melted from the sky like wax and smothered his friend, and when he blinked, Haruto was gone.

A lingering whisper echoed in his ears. _Someday, we should meet up there. Come find me, Hajime._

He wakes up cold.

Hajime is not prone to nightmares. He never has been. He never was a child with an overactive imagination; he grounded himself in reality and went to engineering school and set his sights, for reasons he could not explain beyond a childhood friend he knew for a few summers and who never returned, on _Castle West._

It has been years since he has even thought of that promise, insignificant and trite as it had been. Years since he had thought of Haruto, whose family had stopped making the trip out to Abato the summer that Hajime entered his third year of middle school. But now, when the clock reads 0416 on Thursday morning and Hajime’s hands shake, a little; as he makes himself hot chocolate to stave off the chill, he finds that he can’t get the boy off his mind.

“I should track him down, reach out,” He mutters to himself, rubbing his upper arms. “Invite him for a tour or something. He loved this place.”

In the early morning part of the cycle, the station lights are dark. The hallways stretch out, horizontal wells that one could get lost in, labyrinthine in the early cycle. Like this, the place seems more eerie and decrepit than it does any other time. Hajime shivers.

He’d message someone later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is super short! but it is the second half of the original chapter two, MESSAGE INTERCEPTED. uhh, i don't really have a lot else to say besides, thanks for the patience with the sporadic updates and the unedited mess that is castle west. thank you for reading!
> 
> as usual, you can find me on twitter @rgdivine where i talk about haikyuu, castle west, kingdom hearts, and whatever else crosses my cluttered mind. i reply to comments and i love meeting new people!


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